By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
Whereas I use Bultmann's phrase, "the 'right' philosophy" gladly because, on my use, it refers to both of philosophy's tasks—its first, strictly analytic task, which, for me, as for Bultmann, includes its proper transcendental-metaphysical (or, as he would say, following Heidegger, "ontological") task; and philosophy's second, existential/ existentialist task of critically appropriating all "world views," "philosophies of life," "self-understandings"/ "understandings of existence," and so on—he himself evidently uses it to refer solely to philosophy's first, strictly analytic task, understood as including an "existentialist analysis" of the self, others, and the transcendent. In other words, he does not allow, or, at any rate, seem to allow, for philosophy to address the existential question directly, even at the secondary, critically reflective (and in that sense indirect!) level at which it would alone be able to address it. To this extent, his own position, somewhat like D. Z. Phillips's, could be fairly characterized as a "fideist" position, according to which the last word on whether or not a given self-understanding/ understanding of existence, and so on, is valid is the word of the person(s) deciding for or against it.
I find it ironic, therefore, that Bultmann should ever be accused (as he is, e.g., by Nygren) of having a "speculative," "metaphysical, "unscientific" understanding of philosophy. All one has to take seriously into account is Bultmann's obvious hostility toward Hegelianism—in philosophy as well as theology—to realize that employing an "unscientific" philosophy is the last thing he wants to encourage. In point of fact, his idea of "the 'right' philosophy," as distinct from mine, is not all that different from Nygren's own—with the one important difference that Bultmann takes "analysis" sufficiently broadly to include what Heidegger and he both mean by "ontology." That is, he holds, as I also do, that there is a "core," or "center," to philosophy as well as a "periphery," in that, whatever particular context(s) of meaning may be to the forefront, it is always one and the same self, others, and transcendence that are in the background as necessarily presupposed.
So, in his view, as in mine, "logical analysis of presuppositions" is simply incomplete without the core, or central, kind of analysis that is, at one and the same time, a "fundamental ontology." On the other hand, I know of nothing he says that indicates anything but agreement with the claim that such an ontology is just as "scientific" as any other science properly so-called—and that, if it weren't, neither philosophy nor theology would have any business giving it the time of day.
If I'm right, however, "the 'right' philosophy" is not exhausted by an ontological science, or, as I call it, transcendental metaphysics, even though it necessarily includes such. Why not? Because, being the search for wisdom as well as knowledge, it also has the task—the existential/existentialist task—of critically appropriating, i.e., critically interpreting and critically validating, all claims to existential truth expressed or implied by human culture and religion in general.
13 November 2009
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